Katherine Anne Porter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning
American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist.
She is known for her penetrating insight; her works deal with dark themes such as betrayal,
death and the origin of human evil.
Contents
1 Biography
2 Awards and honors
3 Works
3.1 Short stories
3.2 Short story collections
3.3 Short Novels
3.4 Novel
3.5 Essays
4 References
5 External links
Biography
Callie Russel Porter, born in Indian Creek, Texas,[1] was the fourth of five children of
Harrison Boone Porter and Alice (Jones) Porter. Her family tree can be traced back to
American frontiersman Daniel Boone, a heritage she was proud of.
In 1892, when Porter was two years old, Porter's mother died two months after giving birth to
her last child. Porter's father took his four surviving children (an older brother had died in
infancy) to live with his mother, Catherine Ann Porter, in Kyle, Texas. The depth of her
grandmother's influence can be inferred from Porter's later adoption of her name. Her
grandmother died while taking 11 year-old Callie to visit relatives in Marfa, Texas.
After her grandmother's death, the family lived in several towns in Texas and Louisiana,
staying with relatives or living in rented rooms. She was enrolled in free schools wherever the
family was living, and for a year in 1904 she attended the Thomas School, a private Methodist
school in San Antonio, Texas. This was her only formal education beyond grammar school.
In 1906, at age 16, Callie left home and married John Henry Koontz, the son of a wealthy
Texas ranching family, and subsequently Callie converted to John Koontz's religion, Roman
Catholicism. John Henry Koontz was physically abusive to Callie; once while drunk, he threw
her down the stairs, breaking her ankle.
In 1914 she escaped to Chicago, where she worked briefly as an extra in movies. She then
returned to Texas and worked the small town circuit as an actress and singer, divorcing
Koontz in 1915. As part of her divorce decree, she asked that her name be changed to
Katherine Anne Porter.
Also in 1915, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent the following two years in
sanatoriums, where she decided to become a writer. It was discovered during that time,
however, that she had bronchitis, not TB. In 1917, she began writing for the Fort Worth
Critic, critiquing dramas, and writing society gossip. In 1918, she wrote for the Rocky
Mountain News in Denver, Colorado. In the same year, Katherine almost died in Denver
during the influenza pandemic (the Spanish flu). When she was discharged from the hospital
months later, she was frail and completely bald. When her hair finally grew back, it was
white, and remained that color for the rest of her life. Her experiences during treatment
provided the background for her short novel Pale Horse, Pale Rider.
In 1919, she moved to Greenwich Village in New York City and made her living ghost
writing, writing children's stories and doing publicity work for a motion picture company. The
year in New York City had a politically radicalizing effect on her, and in 1920, she went to
work for a magazine publisher in Mexico, where she became acquainted with members of the
Mexican leftist movement, including Diego Rivera.
Eventually, however, she became disillusioned with the revolutionary movement and its
leaders. During this period, she also became intensely critical of religion and remained so
until the last decade of her life when she again embraced the Roman Catholic Church.
Between 1920 and 1930, she traveled back and forth between Mexico and New York City and
began publishing short stories and essays. In 1930, she published her first short story
collection, Flowering Judas and Other Stories. An expanded edition of this collection was
published in 1935 and received such critical acclaim that it alone virtually assured her place in
American literature.
In 1926, she married Ernest Stock and lived briefly in Connecticut before divorcing him in
1927. Some suggest that Porter suffered several miscarriages, at least one stillbirth between
1910 and 1926, and an abortion, and after contracting gonorrhea from Stock, that she had a
hysterectomy in 1927, ending her hopes of ever having a child. Yet, Porter's letters to her
lovers suggest that she still intimated her menstruation after this supposed hysterectomy in
1927. As she once confided to a friend, "I have lost children in all the ways one can."
During the 1930s, she spent several years in Europe during which she continued to publish
short stories. In 1930, she married Eugene Pressley, a writer 13 years her junior. In 1938,
upon returning from Europe, she divorced Pressley and married Albert Russel Erskine, Jr., a
graduate student who was 20 years younger. He reportedly divorced her (in 1942) after
discovering her real age. She never remarried.
Between 1948 and 1958, Porter taught at Stanford University, the University of Michigan and
the University of Texas, where her unconventional manner of teaching made her popular with
students. In 1962, she published her only novel, Ship of Fools, which was the best-selling
novel in America for that year; its success finally gave her financial security (she reportedly
sold the film rights for $400,000).
Despite Porter's claim that after the publication of Ship of Fools she would not win any more
prizes in America, in 1966 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, and that year was also appointed to the
American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 1977, Porter published The Never-Ending Wrong, an account of the notorious trial and
execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, which she had protested fifty years earlier.
She died in Silver Spring, Maryland on September 18, 1980, at the age of 90, and her ashes
were buried next to her mother at Indian Creek Cemetery in Texas.
Awards and honors
1966 — Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Stories (1965)
1966 — National Book Award for The Collected Stories (1965)
1967 — Gold Medal Award for Fiction (American Academy of Arts and Letters)
Three nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature
2006 — Porter was featured on a United States postage stamp issued 15 May 2006. She was
the 22nd person featured in the Literary Arts commemorative stamp series.[1][2]
Works
Collected Stories and Other Writings appeared in the Library of America series in 2008.
Short stories
"Maria Concepcion", 1922
"The Martyr", 1923
"Virgin Violeta", 1924
"He", 1927
"Magic", 1928
"Rope", 1928
"Theft", 1929
"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall", 1930 (American film, 1980)
"The Cracked-Looking-Glass", 1932
"Hacienda", 1934
"The Grave", 1934
"The Downward Path to Wisdom", 1939
"The Leaning Tower", 1941
"The Source", 1944
"The Journey", 1944
"The Witness", 1944
"The Circus", 1944 (American film, 1990)
"The Last Leaf", 1944
"A Day's Work", 1944
"The Old Order", 1958
"The Fig Tree", 1960 (American film, 1987)
"Holiday", 1960
"A Christmas Story", 1967
Short story collections
Flowering Judas and Other Stories, 1930
The Leaning Tower and Other Stories, 1944
The Old Order: Stories of the South, 1955
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, 1965
[ The collection of 19 short stories and novellas won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1966. It should be
noted that in the preface "Go Little Book . . " to the Collected Stories, Ms Porter abjured the word
"novella," calling it a "slack, boneless, affected word that we do not need to describe anything." She
went on to say "Please call my works by their right names: we have four that cover every division:
short stories, long stories, short novels, novels."]
Short Novels [3]
Old Mortality, 1937
Noon Wine, 1937 (American TV, 1966; American TV, 1985)
Pale Horse, Pale Rider, 1939 (British TV, 1964)
Novel
Ship of Fools, 1962
Her only novel, it was published on April 1 (April Fools' Day). This work, which tells the tale of a
group of disparate characters sailing from Mexico to Germany aboard a mixed freighter and passenger
ship, is a satire that traces the rise of Nazism and looks metaphorically at the progress of the world on
its "voyage to eternity."
In 1965 it was made into a film, adapted from the novel by Abby Mann and directed by Stanley
Kramer. The film won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White
(Robert Clatworthy, Joseph Kish) and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White.
Essays
"The Necessary Enemy", 1948
"The Future is Now", 1950
"The Days Before", 1952
"The Never-Ending Wrong", 1977
"The Charmed Life", 1942
References
^ a b United States Postal Service (2006-05-15). Katherine Anne Porter Stamp Sails Into Post
Offices. Press release.
http://www.usps.com/communications/news/stamps/2006/sr06_023.htm.
Retrieved on 2008-07-10. "Acclaimed writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Anne Porter
was honored today by the U.S. Postal Service with the issuance of a commemorative postage
stamp."
^ ed. William J. Gicker (2006). "Katherine Anne Porter 39¢" (print). USA Philatelic 11 (3):
13.
^ The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.,
1965
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Katherine Anne Porter
Brief biography at Kirjasto (Pegasos)
Brief biography at Perspectives in American Literature
Katherine Anne Porter at American Masters (PBS)
Brief biography at Famous Texans
Katherine Anne Porter Timeline
Biography of Katherine Anne Porter at The Literary Encyclopedia (limited access)
US postage stamp at USPS
A Tribute Site to Porter's Life, Work, & Legacy (includes an active literary discussion forum)
Photos of the first edition of Porter's Pulitzer Prize winning book
Official site of Porter's childhood home in Kyle, TX